What if someone told you that you can attain high level of proficiency (a level you admire, and aspire to achieve) in android development or writing or public speaking or a sport or any pursuit in 2-3 years. You’ll likely not believe.

People, by and large, overestimate what they can achieve in the short term (say, 3-4 months) and grossly underestimate what they can in 2-3 years.

For the uninitiated, deliberate practice is a focused form of practice wherein you proactively look for improvement in whichever craft you’re trying to become better. Deliberate practice was first advocated by Anders Ericsson, who suggested that the top performers in any field reach the levels they do through deliberate practice. Think Roger Federer, Lionel Messi, Magnus Carlsen. Anyone can practice deliberately though, and improve her/ his level at a rate much faster than others’.

How is deliberate practice different from the practice that most of us go through?

International Mathematical Olympiad (IMO) is unarguably the toughest pre-college test in mathematics. (You’ll see plenty of examples in this post to illustrate this point.) And it’s also the oldest – the first IMO was held in Romania in 1959 – of all International Science Olympiads.

If you’re like most, then you take mock tests with following goals in mind: see where your preparation stands (or how much you score); test yourself in exam conditions; and hone your time management skills.

If you’re a student who wants to crack the toughest exams out there, you would’ve marveled the effortless ease with which the brightest consistently finish in top 0.1 percentile.

If you’re a wannabe tennis player, you would be in awe of the games of Roger Federer and Novak Djokovic.

“Their brain, their body is wired differently.”

“They’ve natural talent.”

“They’ve innate ability.”

“They’re blessed.”

These thoughts cross your mind, and you convince yourself to live a ‘normal’ life because you can’t change your wiring, because you can’t create talent out of nowhere, and because blessings are divine.

What if I tell you that these things matter much, much less – if at all they do – than you think? (As we’ll learn later in the post, wiring, for example, depends only on our experiences.) What if I tell you that there is a path accessible to everyone that can take you too to the dizzying levels of some of these greats?

You may be smart, talented, and curious, and yet fail to achieve what some of your less illustrious peers have… if you aren’t gritty.

You may have high IQ, and yet finish your school/ college with a low GPA… if you aren’t gritty.

Fins call it sisu; Dutch, gruis. It goes by different names across the world, but, as research is unravelling factors behind success, it is being considered as the single biggest predictor of high achievement (tough pursuits, the ones that bring big successes).

After a poor performance in the mid-term test (or at any other task), have your thoughts wandered in this direction:

“I’m a total failure.”

“I suck in math.”

“Everyone else seems to be doing better than me. I’m just not cut out for this.”

“Life is unfair, and my efforts are not going to make a difference.”

“The teacher is biased.”

If such thoughts often cross your mind, then you display fixed mindset, one of the two mindsets (the other being growth mindset) first articulated by Carol Dweck, one of the world’s leading researchers on achievement and success, and the author of bestseller Mindset: The New Psychology of Success.

When you finish an article or book on how a superstar became successful, I bet most of you wonder, “How can I emulate this guy?” You, of course, know ‘ten ways to be A+ student’ and the like, but you also know that knowledge of those ten ways is not enough. They alone won’t take you there. You need few underlying, invisible forces working like your DNA to lead you there.